NVIDIA Officially Backs Out Of ARM Acquisition

In 2020, NVIDIA announced that they would be acquiring ARM. However, fast forward to today, a report from the Financial Times has revealed that the company will be backing out of the deal after facing pressure not just from regulators, but also others within the tech industry.

We had heard back in January that NVIDIA was already considering backing out of the deal, and now it seems that they have. For those unfamiliar, ARM is the company whose designs are used by many companies that make their own custom chipset. We’re talking about Qualcomm, MediaTek, Huawei, Apple, Samsung, and so on.

There were concerns that NVIDIA acquiring arm could result in these companies being forced to pay more for patents and licenses, even though NVIDIA had assured that would not be the case. However, there were also concerns raised by various governments around the world, which ultimately led to NVIDIA backing down.

As to what will happen now, it seems that SoftBank who owns ARM is apparently planning on launching an IPO to take ARM public before the end of 2022. NVIDIA backing out will no doubt dampen the company’s plans to play a bigger role in the chip space, but with all the regulatory pressure, we’re not sure if it could have gone forward anyway.

Tyler Lee
Categories: General
Tags: NVIDIA